Or more precisely, Signal will only use fallback notification services if Google Play Services is unavailable at the time Signal is installed.
I just wanted to clarify that it’s not necessary to install Signal once with Play Services and again without. I’ve never had Play Services on any of my phones, but was able to start using Signal without issue.
Signal does not need Google Play Services to send notifications. I’m saying this from experience, as I use it without Play Services installed, and still get message notifications. I believe Signal will use Google’s push notifications if Play Services is available, but has a fallback approach if it’s not.
The slowness was not a tax on the real work; the slowness was the real work. It was how the work got good, and how the people producing the work got good
This line reminded me of a couple of articles, linked below, that I read on AI use in astrophysics. Developing junior researchers is a big part of the point of their work, so they really are going to have to limit their AI use to make sure development happens. But worry that industry won’t care; they’ve been hollowing out junior positions for years, because there’s no value in training a senior who is just going to jump ship to a company that doesn’t train juniors. That’s an existing problem, but AI seems likely to make it worse.
And that’s only, like, the most basic part of an industrial e-stop. On top of directly disconnecting the energy source, it also has to include redundant circuits (since it’s possible for a contactor to break and fail open, or weld and fail closed), and some even need to have signal pulses constantly going through them to actively confirm they haven’t been pressed. They absolutely should not just send a signal to a Linux computer, because general-purpose operating systems are too complex to be rated for safety.
This isn’t even my area of expertise yet I know this stuff. The fact that they failed at the very first requirement is really messed up.
Even if you press that big red emergency stop button on the mower itself, a hacker can send another command to unlock it, Makris says.
Holy cow. I work in factories, and I know enough about industrial safety to know that would not fly.
It’s a forgejo instance. I don’t know why they don’t just say that.
They do say that. Has the article changed since you read it?
That’s why the Open Source Program Office (OSPO), a division within the Ministry of the Interior, has chosen to opt for Forgejo.
They don’t say it up front because it’s not too relevant to the article. The key fact is that the government is getting off of Github, not the technology they’re switching to, so that’s what goes in the headline.
Okay, I didn’t know those were things you were concerned about :).
On the lack of self-hosting and federation, I don’t like it either, but it is a deliberate choice to allow faster evolution. That post, from ten years ago, contends that federated protocols ossify too easily, while centralized can grow and adapt (relevant quote: “So while it’s nice that I’m able to host my own email, that’s also the reason why my email isn’t end-to-end encrypted, and probably never will be”). This does give me concern that Signal will not last in the long-term, but for secure communication right now, it’s hard to beat.
As for US hosting, that’s another thing I don’t like, but they are structured to mitigate that issue. Their protocol, which has been independently audited several times, ensures neither the Signal Foundation nor any intermediaries can see user activity. They have been subpoenaed before, and have only been able to provide the date a phone number was first registered, nothing more. And since the Signal Foundation is a non-profit, they have no incentive to enshittify to turn profitable. So even under US government threat, they can’t see what you’re doing and have no ability nor reason to change that.
Anyway, that’s why I settled on using Signal, despite its imperfections. You may be happier with Matrix; I stayed away from that because it’s more work and less secure (as I understand, group chats only have message content encrypted, with metadata like users and message times being unencrypted), but its federated nature may let it outlast Signal. And there are many Matrix clients in F-Droid that don’t require Google Play Services.